Realizing that this was not the path he wanted to follow, he went back
to the university. However from 1941 to 1952 he taught in the English
Department at the Allahabad University and after that he spent the next
two years at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Cambridge
University doing his doctoral thesis on W.B. Yeats. It was then, that he
used ‘Bachchan’ as his last name instead of Srivastava. Harivanshrai’s
thesis got him his PhD at Cambridge. He is the second Indian to get his
doctorate in English literature from Cambridge. After returning to India
he again took to teaching and also served at All India Radio,
Allahabad.
In 1926, at the age of 19, Bachchan married his first wife, Shyama, who
was then 14 years old. However she died ten years later in 1936 after a
long spell of TB at just 24 years of age. Bachchan again married, Teji
Bachchan, in 1941. They had two sons, Amitabh and Ajitabh.
In 1955, Harivanshrai shifted to Delhi to join the External Affairs
Ministry as an officer on Special duty and during the period of 10 years
that he served he was also associated with the evolution of Hindi as
the official language. He also enriched Hindi through his translations
of major writings. As a poet is famous for his poem Madhushala (a bar
selling alcoholic drinks). Besides Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, he will also
be remembered for his Hindi translations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and
Othello and also the Bhagvad Gita. However in Nov 1984 he wrote his last
poem ‘Ek November1984’ on Indira Gandhi’s assassination.